In shipshape and of plain sailing

Harvinder Khetal

I have been following the shipping voyage of an Indian Navy team termed as historic. It is historic because not only is it a first expedition of its kind comprising a naval team of all women but also because they had set sail on a global circumnavigation (round the world) trip, considered to be one of the toughest feats. The voyage of six women crew circling the waters of the world in a circle has been aptly christened the ‘Navika Sagar Parikrama’. On Friday, the tiny sailboat — 56-foot Indian Naval Sailing Vessel (INSV) Tarini —crossed the Cape Horn, off the Southern tip of South America. After taking off from Goa on September 10, 2017, the sailors’ first of the four stopover points was Fremantle in Australia and the second Lyttelton in New Zealand, that they reached early December. Their remaining two stopover ports are Port Stanley (in the Falkland Islands off Argentina in the Atlantic Ocean) and Cape Town (in South Africa). The team led by Lieutenant Commander Vartika Joshi is slated to complete the circle when the seawomen return to Goa in April.

So, when the seafarers crossed Cape Horn on Friday, rather than considering it to be a routine affair, the headline at once arrested my eye and alerted me to it being a significant achievement. It read: Indian Navy’s all-women crew successfully crosses Cape of Horn, ‘Mount Everest of sailing’.

That was an aha moment for me. The metaphor ‘Mt Everest of sailing’ did the trick. We all know that the scaling Mt Everest — the highest mountain of the world, at 8,848 m — is an extremely tough climb. But not many of us are aware that for the sailors and mariners, rounding Cape Horn, off the Southern tip of South America, entails a breath-stopping passage — the Drake passage — as it is the roughest stretch of water on the planet. Like successful Everesters, Team Tarini proudly hoisted the Tricolour onboard Tarini on crossing Cape Horn, and invited congratulatory messages from PM Modi, among many others.

Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in ‘Mount Everest of sailing’ or drowning in money). 

It reminds me of an interesting class in which our teacher tried to enhance our literary skills by testing our knowledge of metaphors thus:

Q: What is the Broadway of England?

A: West End.

Q: What is the Nobel prize of Asia?

A: Ramon Magsaysay Award.

And, so on….

But one of the most commonly cited metaphors remains this monologue from Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and entrances.

We in India, also often similarly metaphorically say that “we are mere puppets in the hands of God, the Master Puppeteer.”

Here’s another oozing with philosophy, coming from famous American novelist Truman Capote:

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.” 

Well, going back to the success of Team Tarini, I am reminded of a few metaphors from the sailing world. Tarini need necessarily be in shipshape for the success of the trip around the globe. To be in shipshape is in a neat and orderly state. It is based on the obligation of a sailor to keep his/her quarters arranged neatly and securely against the inevitable turbulence at sea. The phrase shipshape and Bristol fashion also means meana in good and seamanlike order with reference to the condition of a ship. The expression had its origin when Bristol was the major west coast port of Britain at a time when all its shipping was maintained in good order.

And, most will recall their boss or teacher shouting: “All decks on hand.” You know that’s when you have been called to pitch in as everyone’s help is required to finish the work left in a short amount of time. Of course, there is no such order if there’s plain sailing, that is there is easy unobstructed progress in the work.

But obviously, these sailors have had a history of a rocking boat.

Two sailors are talking:

Sailor A: “I hear fish is good brain food.”

Sailor B: “Yeah, I eat it all the time.”

Sailor A: “Well, there goes another theory!”

But this colourful one left me smiling:

A boat carrying red paint crashed into a boat carrying blue paint and the crew were marooned.

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